Clear Space ‘wounds’ self-inflicted

I am writing to respond to your recent coverage of the Clear Space site-plan review process. I refer specifically to the articles in your Feb. 5 edition headed “Commission delays Clear Space decision,” and in your Feb. 9 edition headed “Frustration builds as Clear Space sees more delays.”   

The implication of these reports is that the Clear Space theater project, through no fault of its own, has been caught in a bureaucratic morass caused by the City of Rehoboth Planning Commission.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Clear Space’s travails are a clear example of self-inflicted wounds.

Over two years ago, Oct. 12, 2018, the Clear Space Theatre Company presented plans for an approximately 34,500-square-feet building that did not comply with the city zoning code for a variety of reasons. As a result, the project could not proceed to site review by the planning commission and receive approval for a building permit. 

Rather than submit to the public processes of sketch and site-plan review, Clear Space followed a path seeking favor and influence within city hall instead of seeking public comment. From April 2019 through April 2020, Clear Space plans were embargoed from public view while Clear Space pursued a closed, back-channel approach with the city officials to plan a “code-compliant” project and then released it to the public in April 2020.  

On its own accord, Clear Space left the planning commission site-plan review process in April 2019 and didn’t return until July of 2020, when the planning commission held a preliminary hearing on site plans submitted by Clear Space.

This was an entirely different plan than originally submitted in 2018.  Rather than a single theater, this submission was for an entirely different project involving two separate theaters that are not code compliant. 

The new Clear Space project was approved by the former planning commission one month later, Aug. 14, 2020. However, the mayor and commissioners remanded the decision of the planning commission for a new public hearing because of procedural flaws in the conduct of the August 2020 hearing. That rehearing was held January 2021, and the vote on the project has been rescheduled for Feb. 12.  

The point of this detailed exposition of the background and timeline of the Clear Space site plan review process is to refute the suggestions in your prior reporting of the Clear Space project, that it has been victimized by the failure of the city planning commission to review its site plans on a timely basis. 

The leadership of Clear Space should have expected, and even welcomed, a careful review of its proposed theater project by the planning commission.

However, Clear Space has consistently attempted to avoid and evade public comment and input in favor of a go-it-alone approach. 

From the beginning of this process, Clear Space has insisted on what it wants, where it wants, and when it wants – code or no code – and has engaged in whatever delay tactics it believed would help to achieve its goals.

Meanwhile, the Clear Space project has at all times been dealt with expeditiously by the planning commission. It even accorded Clear Space an expedited hearing last August notwithstanding that there are no provisions in the Site Plan Review Code for accelerating the process set forth in the code. 

Clear Space could have used the past two years to work with the city and the Rehoboth community to resolve the parking, traffic, noise, architectural incompatibility and other issues that its proposed project presents. If it had done so, its theater complex might well be under construction as I write. 

However, Clear Space has consistently chosen to confront the board of commissioners, the planning commission, its nearby neighbors, and other city residents and property owners with its my way or the highway attitude toward the city’s site-plan review process. 

In closing, I urge your reporters to recognize that the city planning commission is simply doing its job as required by the city’s Site Plan Review Code. Let’s not engage in a negative blame game, at least where the planning commission is involved. 

Let’s recognize instead that every one of the major procedural delays experienced by Clear Space has been largely of its own making.

Let’s look forward positively to the day when it may be possible to resolve the legal and factual issues that the Clear Space project presents to the City of Rehoboth Beach community.